All grain vs PM brewing

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Dawgbrew

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I am finishing up my first brew which is a Whisky Stout that I got from a Brewer's Best Kit. This was a PM. I got into brewing b/c it's fun and I would like to make "good"/not award winning beer. My question is... can I continue to make "good" beer and never move up to All Grain brewing?

Also, I've been told by my local Brew Store to stay away from these kits b/c they use old ingredients and buy their "fresh" stuff. Once again, I'm no expert and probably couldn't tell the difference b/w the 2. I like the convenience of the kits, but am I really missing out on the freshness of the store bought stuff?
 
I am new to brewing also but have loved doing partial mash kits. The all extract seems a little boring to me. This summer when I have more room outside to do all grain I plan on trying some. The partial mashes I've gotten from austinhomebrew.com smell great and more importantly taste great too. Sounds like your local place is just trying to drum up business. I would believe the larger online places would turn over their ingredients faster than my tiny local shop. Just my .02.
 
There are people that will say you can indeed make award winning beers with extract. If you like the partial mash and don't want to move to all-grain, then don't move to all-grain!

As for kits, I prefer buying the ingredients a la cart because it is often cheaper that way, and it gives me the option to make my own recipe. I don't know about the freshness of kits; I only used one once and it was the PSA from BB when it was introduced, so I knew it was fresh.
 
An option to kits is the Brew Builder Brewmasters Warehouse. You can put in recipes you find here on HBT or anything you like. Plus there are a ton of choices in the recipe section. AG, PM and extract. They are custom pulled and ground so you know they are going to be fresh.
 
The Brewers Best Whiskey Barrel Stout kit is not a partial mash, it's an extract kit with steeping grains. None of the ingredients in this keep require a mash, only a steep. I confused these two for a while when I started and thought these kits were partial mash too, but they're not.
 
Steeping of grains extracts only flavor and non-fermentable sugars and typically is done in 150-165 degree F water. There is no starch conversion and this was your roasted barley, caramel 90 and dark chocolate malts.

Mashing requires you to soak the crushed grains (base malt like 2-row) at a very specific temperature (say 152 for 45-90 minutes) and it involves the extraction of complex starches and diastatic enzymes, which then convert the starches into simple fermentable sugars over the 45-90 minute period. Mash temperature affects how fermentable the wort is, with lower temps being more fermentable (thinner, more alcohol and drier) and higher temps being less (higher body, sweeter beer).

Almost all of your fermentable sugars came from the malt extract in the kit.

Try doing a search here on base malts vs. specialty malts as well as diastatic power.
 
My question is... can I continue to make "good" beer and never move up to All Grain brewing?

Hell yea. Look into a fermentation chamber / some way to keep the fermenting beer at a nice steady temp. Pitch an appropriate amount of good heathly yeast... bottle (or keg, if you're lucky) on time.... it'll be the best beer you've ever made.


There are people that will say you can indeed make award winning beers with extract. If you like the partial mash and don't want to move to all-grain, then don't move to all-grain!

As for kits, I prefer buying the ingredients a la cart because it is often cheaper that way, and it gives me the option to make my own recipe. I don't know about the freshness of kits

Very good points. You can get DME and hops in bulk, and re-do the kit recipes if you want... or make something of your own design.


Doing extract batches will really allow you to concentrate on your yeast and fermentation. You will certainly make not just 'good' beer, but GREAT beer.
 
There's some truth to what your local guy was telling you. You never know how long a BB kit has been sitting on a shelf. The grains are already crushed and they, along with the hops and yeast tend to go downhill when not refrigerated.

Places like AHS will build your kit when you order and you'll get fresher ingredients.
 
Well, I did PM for years. I made decent beer that I liked to drink, but it was nothing to write home about. Then, on a whim I upgraded to AG. I wish I'd done it sooner.

IMO, there are two problems with PM: wort composition and "twang". Doing the mash yourself gives you much better control over the fermentability - mash at a low temp and get a "light" and highly fermentable wort that works for Belgians and continental lagers, mash high and get a thick and less fermentable wort that is suitable for imperial stouts and barleywines. For example, even with the freshest, lightest extract available I just wasn't able to dry out my Belgians to fit the style, because the extract producers had mashed it at a higher temperature than appropriate.

As for the "twang", I could hide it behind robust hoppiness and roast malts in IPAs and stouts, but couldn't get rid of it even with extract I knew to be fresh. So, bottom line is, you can make good beer with extract, but you just can't brew certain styles correctly and cleanly without AG.

Going AG has solved both these problems for me, and my beer has drastically improved. I'm entering competitions this year for the first time, after brewing on and off for 10 years. I could enumerate many other reasons - better hop utilization, improved clarity, better color control, more gadgetry and so on.

As for kits, they're for beginners. It's easy to learn to formulate your own recipes and buy the ingredients a la carte, without worrying about how long something's been on a shelf.
 
I would much rather spend my money on fresh ingredients for my personal recipes. For me, brewing my own beer is not about making cheap beer. There's plenty of that to be bought in your local supermarkets. I'd much rather spend an extra 2 or 3 dollars per batch for whatever hops, grains, or yeast that I think would make a tasty brew that can't be bought. But that's just MHO.

If you enjoy the process that you're following and the final product...then good on ya. It's your world. RDWHAHB
 
Yeah, what he said. If you are enjoying what you are doing and drinking then what's the problem? However, since you are asking I'm thinking you want to try more. So IMHO you should try what you thought you were doing in the first place, a partial mash. As someone pointed put, your kit is extract with steeping grains. I went to a partial mash system myself and my beer is much tastier and consistent. Plus I get a feel for what AG will be like without a big investment. I get partial mash kits from Austin Home Brew and they work great. I gave also done some of my own recipes and my beer tastes great to me.
 
I've been on the fence about moving up to all-grain, but for now I feel that I'm getting great results with extract w/ specialty grains (just call it "extract", as pure extract-only brewing is seldom done). I've switched from kits to recipes (some from this board, most from "Brewing Classic Styles"), and I've definitely noticed the freshness difference.

That said, I mostly agree with the above saying "Try parting out the ingredients." BB kits are OK (you'll still get beer at the end) but I've found that places online like Northern Brewer, Austin HBS, Midwest, etc. won't just take an old kit off the shelf; they build the kits from the same inventory you'd be ordering individual ingredients from. That means the kit you order will be fresh.

If you stick with extract brewing, you can concentrate on your process, and that is going to be the deciding factor in how good your brews taste. Temp control, water chemistry, sanitation; those are where you need to concentrate your energies. Once I locked down my process, every batch turned out like $12/six-pack beer.

I'm not saying DON'T do partial mash or all-grain brewing at all. I kind of wish I had started right out that way, but money was tight for me at first, so was space in my house. Now I've got almost all of the equipment needed for AG, except for kegging equipment; that's coming after tax season.
 
If you stick with extract brewing, you can concentrate on your process, and that is going to be the deciding factor in how good your brews taste. Temp control, water chemistry, sanitation; those are where you need to concentrate your energies. Once I locked down my process, every batch turned out like $12/six-pack beer.

I'm not saying DON'T do partial mash or all-grain brewing at all. I kind of wish I had started right out that way, but money was tight for me at first, so was space in my house. Now I've got almost all of the equipment needed for AG, except for kegging equipment; that's coming after tax season.

Sage advice.

I even took it a step further and made several one-gallon batches of cheap hard cider before making beer to ensure I had my sanitation and temperatures under control. Total cost: about 10 bucks and some good, drinkable cider. I also learned about gushing infections and over-priming bottles.

There are MANY factors in brewing that are more important than where/how you get your fermentable sugars. I just switched to all grain, but I did it for two reasons: I was getting bored with my extract process and I wanted to experience a wider variety of base malts (Marris Otter, in particular).
 
If you stick with extract brewing, you can concentrate on your process, and that is going to be the deciding factor in how good your brews taste. Temp control, water chemistry, sanitation; those are where you need to concentrate your energies. Once I locked down my process, every batch turned out like $12/six-pack beer.

I'm not saying DON'T do partial mash or all-grain brewing at all. I kind of wish I had started right out that way, but money was tight for me at first, so was space in my house. Now I've got almost all of the equipment needed for AG, except for kegging equipment; that's coming after tax season.

Sage advice.

I even took it a step further and made several one-gallon batches of cheap hard cider before making beer to ensure I had my sanitation and temperatures under control. Total cost: about 10 bucks and some good, drinkable cider. I also learned about gushing infections and over-priming bottles.

There are MANY factors in brewing that are more important than where/how you get your fermentable sugars. I just switched to all grain, but I did it for two reasons: I was getting bored with my extract process and I wanted to experience a wider variety of base malts (Marris Otter, in particular).
 
Plus I get a feel for what AG will be like without a big investment

Who says you have to have a big investment to do all grain? I learned that I can do all grain without a big investment. I studied "brew in a bag" and then bought myself a cheap grain mill (around $20) and a couple of paint strainer bags at the local Home Depot (comes 2 in a package) and started doing 1/2 size batches in my 20 qt stock pot right on the kitchen stove. No mash tun, no false bottom, no stuck sparge, just an easy way to make good beer.
 
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